Holding Tolomy, Corry advanced towards the hedge of thorns. He could feel the cat’s tense, wet body against his own, the small heart hammering. He was impressed that Tolomy managed to keep his claws sheathed. He felt certain that Leesha would have been pricking him whether she wanted to or not.
The stranger ducked out of sight under the thorns. Corry hesitated. Then he saw a few inches of air above the water. He took a deep breath and ducked under the thorns. Corry was able to stand up almost immediately. The vines had been trimmed to form a tunnel. He could see light at the far end and the silhouette of their guide. Laboring against the current, Corry followed him out the other side, where a violet evening sky broke over their heads.
Soon they all stood dripping on a strip of grass dotted with flowers. Before them a gentle rise led up to the shores of a little pool, whence flowed the stream. A small waterfall spilled over the knoll beyond. Large trees dotted the clearing, tracing elegant shadows on the grass. Fireflies hovered over the glassy water. Corry could smell jasmine and mint. The wall of thorns surrounded the entire clearing like soldiers beating back the swamp.
“It’s beautiful,” whispered Tolomy.
Their guide smiled. “Few see it,” he murmured, “and live to tell.”
Chapter 5. Syrill
That excruciating moment when we realize that we have been used, that our plans were all but a piece of someone else’s, that we have been mocked and bought and sold—that moment of anguish is more punishment than all the courts in the universe could assign.
—Archemais, Treason and Truth
In the quivering light of a desert afternoon, a centaur sentry noticed a speck moving over the sand to the north. He paced the parapet, watching with interest as the speck drew nearer. Soon he could distinguish a burro and rider. Just as the sun’s rim started to dip, the burro topped the last dune and stopped, foaming, before the metal-wrought gates of Iron Mountain. “What’s your business?” called the sentry, toying with an arrow against his bow string.
The traveler turned a sweat streaked face upward. His sun-dazzled eyes seemed to focus on the sentry for a moment, then pass through him as cleanly as a blade questing for a vital organ. The burro slumped beneath him. The rider stood as the animal collapsed. “I must speak with your king,” he rasped, then dissolved in a fit of gritty coughing.
The sentry shrugged. “His majesty is not receiving guests at present.”
The newcomer leapt away from his dead burro with a snarl. “Do I look like I came for tea? Tell Targon it’s Syrill; I think he’ll see me!”
The sentry’s eyebrows rose. Turning, he addressed two young guards who’d been listening from the far side of the wall. “Open the gate and escort this faun to King Targon.”
One hesitated. “His Majesty is interrogating prisoners this afternoon.”
The sentry shrugged. “He left special instructions regarding this faun.”
The guards nodded and began to turn the windlass that opened the gate. Ordinarily it was always open, but these were not ordinary times. “Follow me,” said one of the guards.
Even in his exhausted state, struggling to keep pace with the centaur, Syrill noted the city’s eerie silence. Iron Mountain was a trade hub for spices and metallurgy and a stopover point for the merchants coming from the jungles of the far Pendalon Mountains. Cowries, pearls, furs, whale bone, gold, and lapis passed through this city, as well as darker things—drugs and poisons from the deep jungles and the great salt sea. Centaurs were also lovers of sport, and their kings allowed forms of entertainment forbidden in faun territories. A shelt with a taste for gambling could bet on almost any kind of fight in this city.
Syrill noted the empty streets and silent taverns with dismay. Where were the throngs of shelts and centaurs? Where was the endless dull roar from the pits? Even the lull during Danda-lay’s Lupricasia could not account for the shuttered windows and closed shops.
They left the commercial district and entered the mountain fortress. If the activity outside the keep had ceased, activity inside had doubled. Centaurs came and went around him, some pulling carts loaded with supplies that seemed to Syrill’s addled mind all weaponry. Gradually, the crowds thinned as they moved to higher streets. Then they were inside the mountain, passing along torch-lit corridors, the guard waving aside each checkpoint with barely a break in his stride. At last, they came to an area where bars replaced rails, and holes replaced windows. Syrill had burned with heat above, but here a chill seeped into his bones. They entered an enormous underground chamber, and Syrill recognized the king’s private fighting pit. He’d been here years ago with Meuril. Cages opened off ground-level of the pit, and he caught a glimpse of what might be next day’s show—a handful of griffins pacing in the shadows.
A patchwork of rectangular iron gratings dotted the edges of the room, each the mouth of a smaller pit. One was open. A centaur stood beside it with his back to Syrill, heavy muscles sleek and gleaming in the torchlight. He held in his hand a long battle whip. When Syrill saw him, some of the fury that had carried him through the swamp and across the desert flared to life and melted the growing knot of ice in his belly. “Targon!”
The centaur turned, but before Syrill could continue, his escort jumped in. “Your Majesty left orders that Syrill of Undrun be brought to you if—”
“WHERE IS SHE?” Syrill bounded forward with more energy than he would have thought possible when he left his dead burro at the gate.
The escort came after him with a guilty start, but Targon motioned him away. “You may go.” Then to Syrill, “Where is whom?”
“Capricia! Why was she brought here? She was not to be hurt! And when was it decided that we would use real cats? I never agreed to kill Sada!”
“You’re overwrought, Syrill,” murmured Targon. “You must have ridden hard to arrive here so quickly. Peace. Danda-lay should be ours within the hour.” His smiling eyes drank in Syrill’s horror like a butterfly in the deep neck of a flower.
“I’ve left a note,” breathed Syrill, “telling Meuril everything. They’ll find it when they return to Laven-lay, and when they do—”
Targon cocked his head. “Everything? I really doubt it; you haven’t lost that much pride. A note. Inside your deer’s shoe? Oh, Syrill, you’re so predictable.”
Syrill’s face had gone the color of bone. He tried to speak, but Targon continued.
“The deer-keeper would have found it, of course, when he inspected all the deer back in Laven-lay. But Blix won’t have made it back to Laven-lay. Shelts probably think he went with you. Alas, no swamp faun is likely to report the body of a buck at the foot of the cliff, if any swamp faun even recognizes it. A fall like that leaves so many pieces.”
In Syrill’s mind, all the doors and windows were slamming shut. “No.”
“I had to do it, Syrill. I knew you’d lose your nerve, but, you see, I’ve saved you. You’re still in the winning side. I’ll give you apartments in Danda-lay if you like, any apartments; you’ve earned them.” Targon’s voice slid from honey to vinegar. “But I wouldn’t pick a place far from the garrisons. Traitors are never popular with the common shelts.”
“I’ll show you traitor.” Syrill’s hand went to his sword hilt, but even as the steel rang from its sheath, Targon’s long whip lashed hissing around Syrill’s waist. Syrill just managed to get his arms up before they were pinned to his sides. The leather of centaur whips was said to come from nearly invincible wyvern hide. Instead of slashing at it, Syrill dropped his sword and grabbed the whip with both hands. When Targon gave the jerk that should have broken his back, Syrill was merely dragged along the floor.
Targon yanked him forward and reared, drawing Syrill into his lashing hooves. Syrill changed tactics and ran forward, around and behind the centaur, taking advantage of the slack whip to try to free himself. Targon dropped to all fours and gave a powerful back kick.
At the furthest end of his reach, Targon’s hoof clipped Syrill on the side of the head. It was e
nough to bring the faun to his knees. Through a gathering mist, he saw Targon bending over him. The centaur gave several jerks on his whip, but Syrill had locked his fingers around the woven fibers of leather and steel. He did not let go.
Targon lifted him from the ground, suspended on the whip, and shook him. He drew a dagger from a halter belt, then hesitated. “No. There is one who deserves this pleasure more.”
With these words he lowered Syrill’s limp body into the shadows of the pit. Yet even when Syrill lay on the stone at the bottom, Targon could not shake his whip free, and at last he shrugged and dropped it. “Good riddance. It was ill-weighted.” Then he turned the crank, which slid the metal grate into place. “Good-bye, Syrill.”
Through his dizzy half-faint, Syrill heard the hoof beats fading away. In the shadows on the far side of the pit, a paler shape moved. Targon, Syrill remembered, had always been fond of irony.
* * * *
As evening settled on Danda-lay, the fauns of the royal court congratulated each other on their king’s swift thinking and their invincible city. They laughed shakily at their own nervousness and lifted toasts in praise of Danda-lay’s splendor. No one saw several large shapes burst from the flooded tunnels. No one noticed the ripples of water disturbed by powerful tails. And no one saw the reptile forms slip soundlessly out of the basin and into the city streets.
* * * *
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Leesha. “Are you saying you plan to kill us?”
The stranger had started up the slope towards the waterfall. “I doubt it.”
“What do you mean, ‘you doubt it’? Don’t you know what you think?”
“Don’t you?”
“How should I know what you think?”
“My point exactly.”
Leesha ran her claws through the grass. “I think we should leave,” she hissed to Corry. Her hackles were so high she looked half again as big as Tolomy, whose fur lay flat and smooth. The tom cub spoke, “I think we should stay, but I don’t think we should tell him who we are.”
Leesha tossed her head. “Well of course we shouldn’t tell him that. But, Tolomy, he’s dangerous. Can’t you smell it? I’d give half my tail to know what kind of shelt he is.”
Tolomy kept his eyes on the stranger’s retreating back. He should have been much too far away to hear their lowered voices, but the cub whispered anyway. “Whatever he is, he wants something from us. If he didn’t, we’d already be dead. What we need to do is figure out what he wants and then see if we can barter it for information about father.”
“Let’s be realistic,” sniffed Leesha. “It’s hardly possibly that he could not know us. I mean, Tol and me. Maybe not you, Corellian, but two cubs—one white and one orange—in this part of Panamindorah? Who else could we be?”
“Shhh!” hissed Tolomy.
Leesha rolled her eyes. “He’s half way around the lake, Tol. He can’t hear us.”
“What if he’s got servants?”
“I don’t smell any.”
“What if the wind’s wrong?”
Corry held up his hand. “If he can hear us, then we’ve already given ourselves away. He used my name just now, so he knows that much. If he knows who you are, then he’s decided to play along until we choose to trust him. It’s just possible that he doesn’t know...if he’s a hermit, if he lives in total isolation. He’s done nothing but help us, and I think we have to trust him for now.”
“We can’t—” began Leesha.
“We can’t find your father or Capricia on our own! We can’t survive in the swamp unaided! We’ve got to have a guide, Leesha. This shelt looks like our best chance. Maybe our only chance.” Corry stood up and started after the stranger. As he approached the lake, he glanced back and saw Tolomy close behind him, Leesha somewhat farther back.
He felt guilty because he knew that although he might have convinced the cubs, he had not convinced himself. The stranger might or might not be the best path to Lexis. Corry no longer cared. He had to know who and what this person was. At that moment, he would have followed the stranger into fire.
Chapter 6. The House Behind the Waterfall
Fauns exhibited mixed attitudes towards the tiger hegemony in Filinia. Tigers are the largest of the cats and the most potentially dangerous. However, they are generally of milder temperament than lions. The continual civil wars of the lion kings had created poor game management and famines in some parts of Filinia, and the wolflings complained constantly of poaching on their borders. Occasionally hungry raiding parties strayed as far as wood faun territory. The other cats, especially the little ones, took part with Angamor and his tigers. In five bloody days, they swept the lions from their throne, never to return. Five generations later, some of the lions have not yet forgiven them.
—Capricia Sor, A Concise History of Panamindorah
Corry already knew where their benefactor’s house would be. Like a fairy in a children’s tale, he lived behind the waterfall. Beyond the curtain of mist, they found a natural cave. The walls were rough stone, beaded with moisture. Their guide waited until even Leesha had come into the cave, then said loudly over the falls, “Forgive me, but I can’t leave this door standing open. My books get damp.” He opened the door and ushered them through it. Inside was a small chamber with a closed door opposite.
A kind of airlock, thought Corry.
The stranger shut the first door, and the sound of the waterfall dropped to a low murmur. Then he opened the second door, and they entered a well-appointed study. He hung up his cloak and went to work on the fireplace. He did not remove his boots.
Tolomy gasped. “The lights,” he whispered.
Corry looked at the lamps bolted to the walls. It took him a moment to understand. They’re electric! He could have kicked himself for not noticing immediately. For all his time in Panamindorah, he was still part Earthling. And maybe he is, too, thought Corry. The feet under those boots could look like mine.
Glancing down at the cubs, he saw that they had leapt to a different conclusion.
“Wizardry!” hissed Tolomy.
“I told you we shouldn’t have come here!” snarled Leesha.
“No!” Corry groped for a way to calm them without saying something he would regret. “It’s not magic. I’ve seen it before. It’s...technology.”
Without taking her blazing eyes off their host, Leesha spat, “Seen it where?”
Corry was not opposed to going into the whole story with Leesha, but not here, not in front of this unknown element. “Trust me. It’s not magic, but it’s very clever. Where did you learn about electricity, Sir?”
Their host glanced at them and said nothing. Corry tried again. “We’ve trusted you this far. At least give us your name.”
The stranger almost laughed. “You’ve come with me this far because you had no choice. Trust me, you certainly don’t.” He ignored their scowls. “Through that door, you’ll find a pool of warm water and towels. It comes from an entirely un-magical spring. You’ve heard of springs?”
Leesha rumbled in a way that made her sound much larger than knee height.
“While you’re scrubbing away the swamp, I’ll get dinner ready. Then we can talk.”
He exited through the only other door in the room—the one he had not indicated. Corry noted that even beneath his cloak he wore a long chestnut cape. It had an odd symbol on the back, a V-shape with two ovals at the points. The ovals were dark in the middle and surrounded by a tan border. I’ve seen that mark before, thought Corry, but he couldn’t remember where. The symbol was not something he associated with good. It gave him a chill.
They heard an audible click.
“That’s the first door we’ve seen here that locks,” muttered Tolomy.
Corry noticed that the handles of all the doors were the flat kind, easy for an animal to use. The door the stranger had indicated lead to another airlock and beyond it, a bathing room. A passage led out of the room, and from the breeze, Corry guessed
it went outside.
“We should leave the door open to spoil his books,” said Leesha nastily, but Corry closed it. He stripped off his mud-caked clothes, slipped chin deep in the warm water, and leaned back. He closed his eyes. Whatever else the stranger did to them, this was a kindness Corry would not quickly forget. After a long time, he sat up. He thought he might have been dozing. Tolomy had gone, but Leesha lay on the floor a few paces away, strikingly white.
Corry passed a water-wrinkled hand over his face. “Where’s Tolomy?”
“Drying. But we didn’t want you to drown in your sleep.”
Corry smiled. “Thanks.” He thought for a moment. “Leesha, there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you about our scuffle on the cliff.”
Leesha looked at him narrowly. They’d not spoken about their near-fight after spotting the swamp faun army. “You’re still dirty,” she hedged.
Corry nodded and fumbled for a scrub brush. He had been wanting a moment alone with Leesha to talk about this. “I know why you ran out there and risked being seen.”
“Your face,” she continued stubbornly. “It’s got grime right down the middle.”
“You want me to think you did it out of reckless courage,” continued Corry. “Maybe you even think so yourself.”
He’d finally gotten to her. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me you know better, scribe Corellian?”
Corry refused to be piqued. “You did it because Tolomy was right and you were wrong. He’s the one who kept us from walking straight into the swamp faun army. You mocked him for it, and when you saw he was right, you had to do something immediately to distract us—something so dangerous it could have gotten us all killed.”
The Prophet of Panamindorah - Complete Trilogy Page 28
